The Game of Death
by PercyJrocks
Summary: Eric is a normal eighth grader. Until he gets a call from Washington D.C. to take place in many challenges along with four other kids. Only after one kid dies does Eric realize how serious this game was. The game of death.
1. The Call

The Call

It all started on January fourteenth, 2011. The TV was blasting loud, the way I always like it. Nothing good was on though, so I turned it off. "Mom, I'm going over to Jay's house."

"Okay honey."

I stepped outside, strapped on my helmet and rode over to his house. I knocked on the door. He opened it part way. "Hi Jay. Can I come in?" He opened it all the way and let me in. We played his Xbox for a while. After that we went biking. When we went back inside we heard a ding.

"Jay, dinner's ready."

"Eric," Jay started, "Can you stay over for dinner?"

"Let me ask my mom first."

So I called my mom and asked her. She said I could. I went over to the dinner table and looked around. I didn't see his dad anywhere. I decided not to ask where he was. When Jay and I finished eating we just talked to each other in the living room.

"Where is your dad?"

"I don't know. All I know is that Mom and Dad had a big argument last night. Dad left and never came back. He called and said he wanted a divorce, and Mom said 'Fine'."

I couldn't believe it. They were the happiest family I knew.

"So who will you live with?"

"My dad. That means I-I have to move." He started crying and he ran upstairs to his room. I knock on his bedroom door but he said to go away. After knocking a few more times I decided to leave. Before I got outside I saw the weatherman on TV talking about an impressive storm heading towards my town. I took a glance outside. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Weird I thought to myself. I got back on my bike and rode home. The sky was still blue when I heard a rumble of thunder. "I'd better get home fast." So I was right at my driveway when a bolt of sizzling lightning struck inches away from my foot. "Yow!" I ran into my house and bumped into my mom. "Thank goodness you're all right. There's a severe thunderstorm warning." The wind was blowing really hard. The sky was flashing with lightning. Silence was broken with roars of thunder. By the time I went to bed the storm was calming down. Suddenly, I heard a huge snap. I looked out my window and saw an enormous branch falling towards my room. I tried to get out of the room before it crashed through the window, but a shard of glass flew right at me and lodged into my back.

"Ouch!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. My mom ran into my room and gasped.

"What happened?"

"Glass from window… hit back." I collapsed.

When I woke up I was in a hospital bed.

"You're a lucky young man. The glass just missed your lung." The nurse said. I didn't feel lucky. I felt like jumping off a bridge to end the sheer pain. Eventually, I felt good enough to go home. I had missed thirteen days of school. I knew I probably had a bunch of homework at home waiting for me.

Once I got home I had to work on eight science essays, five math worksheets, and an English paper.

After six hours of torture the next day, I was finally back home, still sore. I was sitting around watching TV debating whether or not I should I work on my homework. I have a little while before bedtime.

"Eric, is your homework finished?" Mom asked. "Not quite." I replied. Better get started. All I have is math, my worst subject. Ratios, diameter, area? And all this algebra? Eighth grade is murder. Oh well, might as well try my best.

"Finished," I said aloud one hour later. Time for bed.

I woke up the next morning and it was raining. I tried to turn on my lamp but the power must have been out. My little brother, Jack, was dancing around chanting, "No school. No school." My mom was outside talking to the neighbors about the sudden outage. It really wasn't raining hard enough to knock out the power. "Weird" I thought. My cat, Colonel, was under the table like he was afraid of something. I crouched down to pet him. He let out a loud hiss. That was odd because he was usually fairly gentle.

Just then the power came back on. Jack went outside to tell Mom. Right when she came in the phone started to ring. My mom spent about twenty minutes talking. She looked concerned. Finally she hung up.

"Eric, that was the president. He says that you have to meet him at once."

The president?

"Did he say why?"

"No. He just said that you and four other kids have been chosen to go to Washington."


	2. I Climb a Mountain with an Attitude

I Climb a Mountain with an Attitude

After a long debate we decided we should go. On the way there I was mumbling to myself about how sore I was and how now I had to go to Washington despite it. It took seven hours to get there from Chicago. When we arrived, there were four kids in a line listening to a huge man. "See you soon, honey." I crept over to the other kids.

"Eric! You are late!" The man looked furious. "I-I'm sorry. The traffic was terrible."

"Sir!"

"What?"

"The traffic was terrible, _sir_!"

"Oh. The traffic was terrible, sir!"

"Very well. Now as I was saying, the five of you are going to be competing in a series of events. The winner of the final challenge will get riches beyond their wildest dreams. The others, assuming they finish alive, get nothing. Now go to the cabin and get some rest. The first challenge is tomorrow."

"Boy was that harsh," I said to a short boy who was also competing in the challenge. "Yeah. 'Assuming we make it out alive'. Is that scary or what?"

We walked into the cabin and talked. He said his name was Aaron. He was a seventh grader from Idaho. We became friends pretty quickly. The other kids were Samantha from Cincinnati, Ohio, Tyler from Vancouver, British Columbia, and Leslie from Des Moines, Iowa.

The next morning we all walked to a mountain where a man named Jeff was waiting for us. "Good morning. I hope you had a good night sleep because today you're going to climb this mountain," he continued, "It is three hundred feet tall."

"What if we don't want to?" Samantha said.

"Then you will have to take the other challenge." Jeff told her.

"And what is the other challenge?"

"Feeding these three sharks while standing in the water." He pointed to a saltwater pond. A shark jumped up.

We all decided to climb the mountain.

I looked nervously at Aaron who was cringing at the thought of climbing a mountain. "Don't worry, I've rock climbed before. I'll help you." "Thanks Eric," He replied.

Jeff gave us gloves and told us to climb.

"What about harnesses?" I asked.

"You aren't using harnesses," He replied

"What!" Everyone said in unison. We argued with Jeff for ten minutes or so until we decided it was no use and we might as well climb. About ten feet up, Leslie fell and landed on her back. Thankfully she got up. Aaron was side by side with Tyler. I was the highest on the mountain followed closely by Samantha.

"Move it!" she shouted. She shoved me so hard that I almost fell. I was hanging on with one hand. I managed to balance myself enough to get a grip with both hands. I looked up and saw Samantha about twenty feet above me. I looked down and saw Aaron struggling to keep his footing. I kept climbing until I got to a ledge. I waited for Aaron.

Three minutes later he made it to the ledge. "Aaron", I said. "Stay by me."

"Okay." He replied

So the order was Samantha, Leslie, me, Aaron, and then Tyler who fell when he reached forty feet. It took about an hour to get to the top. Aaron was right behind me. "We made it!" he exclaimed. "But Tyler didn't. Look." All four of us looked down at Tyler's lifeless body.

After he fell at forty feet, he fell again at ninety feet. I realized then how serious this place was. All of the sudden the mountain opened up. The four of us fell for what seemed like forever. We finally landed on a bunch of pillows. A voice said that we were supposed to sleep there for the night. Of course, Samantha hogged all of the pillows so everyone else had to sleep on the rocky floor.

"Good morning contestants." The loud voice woke us all up. "Congratulations on making it this far. Unfortunately one of you will not make it out." We all looked at each other.

"Hey bozo, let us out. We already lost one member of the team. Why are we in this stupid challenge thing anyway?" Samantha is very demanding.

The voice ignored her and continued. "This room will flood with lava. Once three people cross the bridge and exit through the door on the left, the doors will shut and the fourth person will be trapped and will burn to death" I had an idea. A crazy idea. An insanely crazy idea.

"Samantha, Leslie, you get out first. Aaron and I will stay here." Aaron looked at me like I was crazy. "You have to trust me Aaron."

The floor had about an inch of lava. "Go Samantha. You too, Leslie." So they both went out the door. "Aaron you need to stay right beside me." So we ran to the door and stopped.

"Aaron, we have to go out at the exact same time."

"How?"

"Stand on my shoulders. You're short enough and the opening is high enough for us to get through."

"Are you making fun of my height?"

"Come on!"

So he climbed on my shoulders and we got out. The door slammed behind us. He got off my shoulders.

"That was brilliant Eric!"

So we ran and caught up with Sam and Leslie.

"What took so long?"

"Sam, will you shut it." I was a little crabby. I mean, I witnessed a boy die. I almost got killed along with my friend. I had every right to be mad. Sam looked like she was about to kill me when the walls started shaking.

"I think we should get out." Like I really needed Leslie to tell me that.

"Run!" I probably shouldn't have yelled like that since the cave was crumbling behind us. We ran until we saw an opening. We went through the hole in the wall and we were finally outside.

"Hurry! We need to get further away from it so we don't get crushed by flying rocks!" I told them. We stopped running after about a minute. I figured we were far enough from the rubble. After walking a ways we spotted our cabins and decided we should rest for awhile. After we rested up and were about to leave the cabin, Jeff came in and looked surprised.

"There are still four of you. How did you get out of the mountain alive?"

"We're smarter than some stupid mountain," I said simply. "Now can you please explain why we are here?" He said that we all had something in common. After that, he just walked out of the cabin completely baffled. I took off my shoes and hopped into my bed.

"Goodnight Aaron," But he was already asleep.


	3. I Fail my Driving Test

I Fail My Driving Test

I was dreaming about Colonel snuggling me when a sudden boom occurred. I looked outside and there was an airplane on the ground on fire. I ran over to it when-

"Eric, wake up." Aaron was shaking me like crazy.

"What?" I looked at the clock.

"It's midnight, Aaron."

"There's a noise out there. Maybe we should check it out." I didn't want to but I decided he wasn't going to stop bugging me if I didn't look.

"Sure. Let's go." We looked around the cabin but there wasn't anything around. "Let's go back in the cabins." Aaron wasn't paying attention to me. Suddenly I saw it too. There was a tractor. He started running toward it.

"Whoa!" Aaron climbed into the seat of it and pretended he was driving. "Come on, Aaron."

"I don't want to go back. Maybe we can get out of here." That sounded like a pretty good idea. "What about Leslie and Sam?"

"Leave them."

"They could end up like Tyler."

Aaron hesitated.

"Hurry up then."

So I ran into their room woke up Leslie and told her to get on the tractor outside. As for Samantha I grabbed her by her ponytail and dragged her into the tractor. She screamed into my ear.

"You idiot, I was sleeping!" I hopped in the front seat since I was the oldest and I started driving. I started out fairly decent but then I realized why the tractor appeared in the first place. It was programmed to take us to the next challenge.

We were running into trees and everything around.

"You moron, you're gonna kill us!"

"Shut up Sam! I can't control it!

We finally arrived at the next challenge. Jeff was standing there waiting for us.

"What took so long?" He took a look at the tractor and shook his head.

"Well, good work on making it here. Unfortunately you ruined the tractor so you will have to use this to get back." He pointed to a Ferrari. Aaron ran over to it and jumped in. "Come on guys!" So we hopped in. I was gonna drive of course.

I was about to press the gas when Jeff said, "Oh and just to let you know, there is nitroglycerin on the floor of the car so you better have a smooth ride." I started to get out but the seat belt buckled all by itself.

"It only unbuckles when or if you get to the cabins." I was freaking out. I pressed the gas pedal and drove slowly. I was driving smoothly when I hit a rock.

The car started saying "Warning, Warning". I knew that if I hit another rock we would all blow up. Luckily I had an idea. I had a nail clipper. It took ten minutes but I finally was able to clip through my seat belt. I jumped out of the car and went in front of the slow moving car. I was able to stop the car and get the others out of it. I let go of the car and I realized that it was heading toward a tree and the steering wheel was stuck.

"Guys, we've got to get away from the car! It's heading for a tree!" We ran as fast as we could but it exploded too soon.

When I woke up Aaron said I was unconscious for an hour. I looked around the cabin. I saw Sam fixing her hair. I saw Leslie in her bed badly burned. I looked at Aaron. He looked fine. "Oh," he said, "My burns are on my back if that's what you were wondering."

Someone opened the door. Jeff walked in. He stopped in his tracks.

"How the heck did you make it out of the car? I saw the remains of the Ferrari and I came here to clean out the cabin. I thought you guys blew up"

"Okay," I said, "What is this all about? Tyler was killed and we barely made it out of those challenges! We all want to go home. We have our rights you know!" I was on a roll.

"I thought we came here for some kind of an award. It turns out that you just want to kill us all! Why won't you tell us why we're here? We've suffered enough! What do we have in common?"

Jeff looked at me. "Think inside the body. And no one can leave until all the challenges are complete."

"How many challenges are there?"

"Twelve." And then he walked out the door.

"We've done the rock climbing, the lava pit, the mountain collapse, the Nitro-Ferrari, and that's only four!"


	4. My Plan Works Almost

My Plan Works…Almost

"Guys," I started, "We need to figure out how to get out of here."

"We know that, genius," Sam snapped. Suddenly Aaron collapsed. "Aaron!" I flipped him over revealing his blood drenched back. Think Eric, think. What do I need to do? "Leslie, hand me your blanket." She grabbed her sheet off of the bed and gave it to me. I wrapped around him to stop the bleeding.

"Does he have a pulse?" Sam checked. "Yep."

"Is he breathing?" Sam checked and said, "No!"

"Does anyone know how to do mouth to mouth resuscitation?"

"I do," Sam said. She reluctantly put her mouth up to Aaron's and started breathing air into him. Aaron started breathing and then he popped up, whacking Sam in the face. "Why you little-."

"Leave him alone, Sam. He's hurt. If you had a brain you would be able to see that he needs rest." I turned to Aaron. "Here, let me help you get back into your bed." I told Sam and Leslie to get some food from the vending machine while I stayed with Aaron. They came back with some beef jerky and jerky Jeff.

"So," Jeff started, "Aaron is hurt?"

"Yeah. I wonder why, Jeff." I muttered. He ignored me.

"Fortunately, he is still going to participate. The next challenge is a tough one. There is a diamond at the bottom of each of the pools outside. Both are attached to chains which are attached to eighty pound anchors. The first team to get their diamond out of the water gets to keep both diamonds and gets to make a wonderful decision. The teams are Leslie and Aaron, and Eric and Samantha." I was hoping the winners would get to decide whether they want to go home.

"How is Aaron going to participate?" I asked.

"By participating, of course." Jeff laughed.

He got Aaron out of his bed and we all grouped up. He blew the whistle and we all dived in. I motioned Sam to lift the diamond so I could try to unlatch the chain. While I was starting to unlatch the chain, I realized Sam was out of the water with the diamond. I noticed that the chain was torn in half. And then I realized the chain was made of paper. I swam back up. Leslie and Aaron came out of the water with their diamond five minutes later.

"We didn't notice that the chain was paper." Leslie said glumly.

"It looks like Sam and Eric win which means they get to make the decision of who is eliminated next."

I couldn't believe it. I had to choose who died next.

"Unfortunately, Eric did not come out of the water with Samantha so she will make the decision."

Everyone was telling her how much they wanted to live. Sam was having a hard deciding. After ten minutes Jeff said that if she didn't choose she would be eliminated. She finally squeaked, "Eric." It took a while for it to sink in.

"Me?"

Jeff took me to a spot in a field, chained me up to a tree, and left.

I was there for two days. I didn't think I would ever get out of there. Suddenly, I heard a whisper.

"Leslie!"

I couldn't believe it. I was saved. She had a hairpin and stuck it in the keyhole that was keeping the chains together.

"Come on! We have to get to the cabin before Jeff realizes I'm gone."

Luckily, Jeff never went in the cabin while she was gone. I was saved thanks to Leslie. Aaron ran over to me. "You're alright!"

"Yep." Now I could put my plan into action.

"Aaron, find Jeff and bring him here. Tell him it's an emergency. Leslie, I need you to tear all the bed sheets except for one. Sam, I need you to beat me up."

Aaron ran out the door as fast as he could. Leslie tore the sheets to pieces. And Sam just smiled at me with her fists clenched. She beat me up pretty good. I even lost a tooth. I told her to go over to the torn up sheets and look crazed while I lay on the ground. I told Leslie to grab the untorn sheet and stand outside the cabin. Jeff came running in.

"What's wrong?" He said. Then he stared at me and momentarily couldn't believe I had escaped the tree. After he finished being dazed he looked at Sam.

"Did you do this to him? And did you tear up all those sheets?" Sam nodded and smiled. Suddenly, Leslie jumped from behind him and wrapped the sheet around his head.

"Run guys! I'll keep it around him Leslie. Just go!" They all ran off while I kept the blanket around Jeff's head.

"Get off!" He screamed.

"Okay." I let go and started running.

I glanced behind me every once in a while but Jeff wasn't there. I stopped running once I caught up to the others.

"Come on! I see the way we came in. All we have to do is go out that way!"

We all ran to the exit but Jeff blocked the opening. Aaron was lucky that he was short because he ducked under his legs and ran out. Unfortunately, Aaron was the only one of us was three foot ten. Jeff grabbed us and dragged us to the cabins, got rid of all the sheets, beds, pillows, and locked us in.

"I was thinking about letting you go soon until you pulled that fast one."

Leslie and Sam looked sad. I told them that he wouldn't have really let us go soon. What was really bugging me was what Jeff had said earlier, "Think inside the body." What could that possibly mean? Then it hit me.

"Leslie, Sam, did anything… strange happen before you guys came here?"

"Well, there was this sudden storm…" Leslie responded

"Same here!" Added Sam.

"Did you have to go to the hospital?"

They both nodded and explained that the nurse drew a lot of blood. I had figured out why we were here… sort of. It had something to do with our blood. But what?


End file.
